By Sarita Chemburkar Agriculture is the main source of livelihoods for around 6 out of 10 people in India, and groundwater has played a key role in providing water for agriculture, especially post the Green Revolution in the 1970s. At a global level, India is today the world’s largest groundwater user, consuming an approximately 260 […]

Much at stake for developing countries like India at COP24 By Arjuna Srinidhi It’s that time of the year again, when world leaders, experts, activists and representatives from affected communities gather to negotiate the best way to tackle climate change. There is so much at stake – lives, livelihoods, industrial growth, economies of countries and […]

By Shreya Banerjee In order to deal with the consequences of climate change, the unsustainable nature of conventional agriculture, and the tremendous stress on the world’s limited and rapidly depleting natural resources, various new practices have been coming up in the field of sustainable agriculture. The blog explores the different terminologies that have come up and […]

With the aim of “co-production of knowledge and learning to stimulate behavioral and institutional change, towards the management of water at village level” workshops were conducted in each GP and their hamlets.he key objectives of the workshop were to understand the following points: a) What is a Water Budget and how a village water budget is calculated?
(b) How to arrive at values for “Water Deficit” and “Water Surplus” at village level?
(c) The need for planning crop production around the water availability and
(d) To understand water wastage due to mismanagement and / or lack of knowledge.

The Water Governance Standard and Certification System is developed to bridge the gap between agrarian communities and the resource agencies. It serves multiple objectives. Its ultimate aim is to develop a system that incentivizes agrarian communities to adopt sustainable water governance practices at local level for assured drinking water and enhanced livelihood opportunities.

There’s a resilience in the farming community that often gets overlooked – a community that has, over generations, developed its own methods and practices of dealing with the unhindered forces of nature. These practices are, unfortunately, being put to test owing to the changing climatic conditions all over the earth. As unpredictable weather patterns keep baffling the farmers, the need for an intervention is apparent to level the playing field. In this regard, we shift the focus on WOTR’s weather advisory initiative which is a real-time, localized, early-warning system which disseminates information directly to the farmers via SMS services. Looking at the effectiveness of the intervention from the vantage point of the farmers brings out the socio-economic complexities which are rarely apparent on the surface.

-Saumyadeb Dasgupta “I wish they’d had electric guitars in cotton fields back in the good old days. A whole lot of things would’ve been straightened out.” -Jimi Hendrix, 1970 YES, if the ‘whole lot of things’ were farmers wanting to form a band but a NO if it were racial conflicts and oppression faced by […]

Natural forces such as drought do not discriminate between marginal communities and the urban population. As a result you see the unprecedented scenes of Cape Town facing a severe water crisis and on the brink of a catastrophic Day Zero scenario. The problem with the changing climate is that humanity, as a whole, is going to face situations which we have no prior experience in confronting. With such an unpredictable future in front of us, the most vulnerable communities need to be equipped first and foremost to prevent a domino effect leading to systemic failure. In the drought-stricken Marathawada region of Maharashtra, where the water dynamics are extremely complicated, WOTR has taken up the mantle to create resilient communities who are able to deal with the widespread problems of water scarcity. Through its flagship Water Stewardship program, it aims to bring a strong sense of ownership among the stakeholders about the extent of the problem and promote collective action over individualistic approaches. It puts the onus of solving the problem on the community itself thereby reducing the dependence on unsustainable practices.

Mobile telecommunications are increasingly being used to deliver weather forecasts directly to farmers in the form of regular advisories. These advisories are also used to introduce farmers to sustainable and innovative agricultural practices that can contribute to improving yields and reducing costs. In this blog we turn to insights from behavioural research to understand how and why advisories can be used to encourage the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices and the implications of this for scaling up these services